Today’s post is inspired by a podcast I listened to and that is “How to Make Money Writing Short Fiction With Douglas Smith” from the podcast The Creative Penn. I am still new to this podcast but so far I am loving it, so if you are looking for a podcast about creativity and writing definitely check it out!

Anyways, I started out writing short fiction and still tend to stick to it as the longest length of story I have written was only 50,000 words…but that is ok! Since I have written a lot of short fiction, I decided to share some perks of starting with short fiction and continuing with it because there are a few. The overall message of this blog post is to start writing short fiction!

• They Are Easier to Get Published – There are an endless amount of literary magazines and contests that only want short fiction. Not novellas or novels but stories that are short and sweet. It is a lot harder to make money off of a novel, which requires a lot more time and effort, so why not try out short fiction and see how much you like it. I am not saying to give up novel writing because I still love writing novels, or at least trying to, but there is no reason why you can’t try both. If you need literary magazine recommendations, here is a past blog post I wrote recommending some.
• They Require Less Time – As I said, short fiction is short and sweet. It requires less time to outline, write and edit. It can take you a two or so days to write the first draft, and two or so days to write the second and third draft, and then two or so days to edit! Of course it depends how much time you have and how you write, but it doesn’t matter because it will still take less time than a novel. However, despite taking less time to craft, I would not say it is much easier because compacting a fleshed out story in a few thousand words…well, that takes skills!
• You Become a Better Writer – Since short stories take so little time to write compared to a novel, it means you can write more of them and when you write more, you become a stronger writer. You get better at story structure, dialogue, fleshing out characters, etc, etc and more comfortable with your writing. You also find your writing voice a lot quicker, but if you want some other tips check out a blog post I wrote last week here.
• You Can Experiment With Genres – Diving into the world of short stories allows you to experiment with different genres easier. You can tread the waters of sci-fi or contemporary, and if it’s not for you oh well, it was only a thousand words or so. If you write a novel and half way through realize it isn’t working because maybe sci-fi isn’t for you…well that is about 40,000 words down the drain.
• It Is More Rewarding – I don’t know about you, but I feel very accomplished and productive when I complete a story and since writing short fiction is quicker, I end up feeling productive a lot. It doesn’t have to be ready to publish, but just having a finished story on your laptop is nice.

That is all for today’s blog post and I hope you enjoyed. Sorry I wasn’t able to post something early but at least I am posting now. Don’t forget to check out my last blog post: Reading + Writing Update!

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